The 2026 Schoolyard BioBlitz

The 2026 Schoolyard BioBlitz

Does your child know the names of 5 trees, 5 wildflowers, and 5 butterflies that are native to DFW? STEM careers are the jobs of the future, and we have an incredible amount of biodiversity at our city parks, wildlife sanctuaries, and in our own backyards.

Science Teachers: get your students fully engaged in discovering STEM subjects and exploring future career paths. Invite your students and their parents to join you during your March 2026 BioBlitz event and win a free wildlife garden for your school.

School Principals: help your students improve STEM test scores by creating a free wildlife garden at your campus when your PTA hosts a successful BioBlitz. Get students engaged with their teachers to learn about the scientific method, nature observation, data collection, biochemistry, and AI innovations in nature research. Photo Credit: the Snowberry Clearwing by Karalyn (CC BY-NC).

Check out the 13,000+ species documented by Sam Kieschnick.

You're Invited

In March 2026, Soils Alive will be supporting 200 schools in DFW to encourage elementary, middle, and high school students to explore STEM careers. Join us for the entire month of March for our 1st annual DFW Schoolyard BioBlitz.

All teachers, parents, students, and PTA members at schools in these 8 ISDs are invited to participate: Richardson, Plano, Allen, Frisco, Denton, Grapevine-Colleyville, Lewisville, and Wylie. The first 200 schools (with 50+ PTA members) to register will receive a free leaderboard, to track your BioBlitz progress to win prizes. Our event is FREE and it's open to all 10,000+ teachers and 80,000+ PTA members.

Make a plan in March to invite your school's students, teachers, and PTA members to visit 4 city parks on the 4 weekends in March. Snap photos of plants, animals, and fungi using the free iNaturalist app on your phone to discover the names of butterflies, beetles, wildflowers, native bees, mushrooms, and more. See which of your friends can find the most wildlife to earn prizes! DFW is home to thousands of species of butterflies, dragonflies, moths, skippers, bees, lizards, frogs, birds, and beetles.....not to mention our native trees, shrubs, grasses, sedges, rushes, and forbs (and 25 plants you can easily grow in your home garden to attract butterflies).

Why Join a BioBlitz?

Joining a BioBlitz is fun! It's a great way to invite a few friends to go visit 4 new city parks you've never been to, and see how much wildlife you can find. Get some weekend exercise in while you watch our plants wake up in March from winter, and the early spring critters start moving around. After a rainstorm, you'll likely find mushrooms popping up. Plan on a daily 15 minute morning walk during March to find wildlife in your neighborhood. You can use the free iNaturalist app on your phone anytime to observe wildlife. It's even more fun when you invite a few friends to join you, and when your observations can help win a prize for your child's school!

A BioBlitz is a great way to meet new friends who also care about nature. You might even make a group of 5 and earn a prize from Soils Alive to get a free wildlife garden at your school. You'll be amazed by all of the wildlife we are blessed with here in DFW. Our city parks teams do a great job of creating habitat for these critters. When schools build more wildlife gardens, there are so many benefits including improved academic performance, reduced stress and anxiety for students, improvements to physical health, and so much more. When HOAs build wildlife gardens at city parks, we create more habitat to support the Monarch butterfly.

School Prizes for 2026

Soils Alive has provided ecofriendly lawncare services to DFW homeowners since 1997. We believe in building healthy soil, which is what supports our lush lawns, beautiful landscaping, and healthy trees. Healthy soil is the foundation for the entire ecosystem, supporting earthworms, beetles, and other critters that birds rely on as food. It's fun to have a piece of wildlife habitat in our backyards to watch birds and butterflies visit. We help schools and city parks create more public habitat with drought-tolerant plants that thrive in our DFW climate. We make it easy to take the first step to build a garden.

In 2026, we will have prizes for the Top 20 individuals across these 8 ISDs who photograph the most species of plants, animals, and mushrooms. We will also have prizes for the Top 10 schools whose teams find the most species. And the Top 3 school districts whose school teams photograph the most species will also win a prize. Soils Alive sells drought-tolerant native plants to build wildlife gardens. Our prizes are free trays of 20 plants, to build a 150 SF garden. Individuals will win 1 tray ($100). Schools will win 2 trays ($200). And 1st, 2nd, and 3rd ISD prizes will be 15 ($1500), 10 ($1000), and 5 ($500) trays of free plants to build larger butterfly gardens in your district (3000 SF, 2000 SF, and 1000 SF).

Prizes for PTAs

The BioBlitz finishes on April 1st. And that's when we host our plant sale. We will have 1000 trays of plants available to sell. $10 per tray sold is donated to your ISD's PTA Council. Local PTAs who sell 5 trays of plants will receive 1 free tray of plants ($100) to build a 150 square foot wildlife garden at your school. We hope that 200 schools hit their goal to sell 5 so that we can help create 200 new wildlife gardens.

The first four ISDs who reach their goals and qualify to participate in our March BioBlitz are invited to register their PTA Council with us. Once registered, local PTAs may let us know if they would also like to participate in our plant sale. Soils Alive can grow 20,000 plants (1000 trays of 20) for our April 2026 plant sale. We need a $10 refundable deposit from your local PTA president for each tray that you would like to reserve for your school fundraiser.

What is a BioBlitz?

Since 2018, the National Recreation and Park Association (NRPA) has hosted their national Parks for Pollinators BioBlitz, every September. Our DFW Schoolyard BioBlitz is focused primarily on public schools, to invite teachers, parents, and students to go out and visit their city parks. But we also invite HOA leaders and city residents to support their neighborhood public school to help them win prizes and join in the fun.

Across the country, during a BioBlitz city residents will take pictures of wildlife found at their local city parks. The 2024 NRPA BioBlitz campaign included the cities of Allen, Plano, and Cedar Hill as well as San Antonio, Pasadena, Galveston, Pflugerville, and Georgetown.

What is iNaturalist?

iNaturalist is a free app you can download on your phone to identify what you're looking at whether it's a tree, bird, insect, grass, wildflower..... you name it. If it's alive, you can probably figure out what it is by snapping a photo. The app is provided for free by the organization that's also called iNaturalist. It began as the Master's degree final project of 3 students at UC Berkeley in 2008.

Since 2017, iNaturalist operated as joint initiative with the National Geographic Society and the California Academy of Sciences. In 2023, it became its own non-profit organization. You can make a charitable contribution to help support the work of their team. Nearly 4 million people have used the platform to collect data and observations of 500,000+ species of plants and animals globally.

Not bad. That's almost half of what science is aware of today (~1,200,000 species on the surface of the planet). But if we keep in mind the 7,000,000+ more species science has yet to discover, we realize that our scientists best knowledge on a biology exam would earn us a grade of 15%. We can list 15 out of 100 living things. There's still so much we don't yet know about the natural world, waiting for us to discover. Learn about how Danish schoolchildren are discovering never-before-seen species of life on our planet.

How can my school attract more wildlife?

You might discover that, during your BioBlitz, there's not a lot of life happening at your school. And that's okay. You will find lots of things you didn't know were there and most importantly, you'll get all your students and teachers engaged and wanting to find more critters next year.

You can easily create more habitat so that next year you'll be able to see more cool things. Here's some of of the benefits of providing K-12 students with a wildlife garden. Make a plan to build a wildlife habitat so that next year you'll discover more critters at your school. Ask 5 of your PTA members to buy a tray of plants, so we can give you a tray for free for a school garden. We offer 25 types of plants that do well in our DFW soils and climate with little to no water needed. Use one of our free garden design templates.

January 1st Deadline to Register

If your school wants to participate in the 2026 BioBlitz, your ISD will need to be among the first 4 ISDs to reach a total of 50 iNaturalist users, each collecting 5+ species observations, by January 1, 2026.

Download the free iNaturalist app today from your app store. Find your ISDs leaderboard by clicking on the Projects Tab. Click the search icon and search for "Soils Alive BioBlitz RISD" (or PISD, AISD, FISD, DISD, GCISD, LISD, or WISD for your school district). Capture photos of 5 different species, then ask your PTA Council to help you find 49 other people to do the same.

Once your ISD reaches 50 users with 5 species IDs each, your ISD will be invited to participate in 2026 if they would like to join us in March. With a free leaderboard for the first 200 schools (with 50+ PTA members) who register with us, you can very easily invite all of your PTA members, science teachers, parents, and students to join you in winning prizes for your school and ISD. Students under the age of 13 are invited to use the Seek app instead. Another way is for parents to use their own app and visit city parks with their child to observe nature together.